LITMIR.BIZ

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or ‘sister’. It’s alien to us in the Owen family. But it’s out there. I see it in football all the time.

      As brothers and sisters, the five of us weren’t competitive with one another. Terry and Andy work at British Aerospace in Broughton, making wings for airbuses and assorted planes. Terry is nearly 10 years older than me and Andy nearly nine, so I was out of my depth when it came to childhood activities. Every Sunday, though, we’d go to the park together to play football, and I suppose I did try to close the age gap so I could be as good as them. My dad was obviously head and shoulders above the three of us, my brothers came next, and I was plainly the worst of the four players. The two decent ones would line up against the very good and the rubbish (that was me). So maybe I was always stretching myself to the limit to reach their level. Around the house Terry and Andy stuck together, and it would never have crossed my mind to take them on. Certainly I never started any fights with them because they seemed immense. My sister Karen was born between Andy and me; there are three and a half years between us. Karen was studying to be a solicitor, then had a baby, and now works part-time. Then there was my kid sister Lesley, who is three and a half years younger than me. I looked after her a lot, and played games with her, sometimes football. If I was in an aggressive mood, Lesley would probably take the brunt of it, and vice versa. She’s training to be an interior designer now.

      Many of my strengths were honed in the park with my dad and brothers, or with my mates after school. At the time, though, I didn’t think of it as an academic process; I just saw it as fun. I didn’t think, ‘Oh, I’m not so good with my left foot so I’d better practise,’ or anything like that. I was so much quicker than everyone else as a small boy that I could run on to a through-ball and have endless time to set up the shot. I could put it where I liked. My right foot was the strongest, so I barely kicked a ball with my left foot until I was 16. The only technical area my dad worked on was my heading. On Sundays in the park he’d send in a few crosses for me to nod in. All kids hate heading the ball, and I was no different. But Dad used to love it when I scored a diving header, because he had scored a few himself in his own career. So I used to do it just to please him.

      As a finisher, it was all about smelling blood, seeing the chance and seizing it. Verbally, I was a bit of a rebel. I was always answering back to referees. I had a temper on me. I was a tough tackler. I had a few good battles with centre-halves on the North Wales schoolboy circuit. My first real tussle, though, was with Richard Dunne, who was at Everton schoolboys when I was in my early teens and playing for the equivalent age group at Liverpool. Richard is a fairly stocky figure, and he wasn’t much different back then. He was the first opponent who really made me think the day before about what I was facing the following afternoon. He was the one I had my first real ding-dongs with. Around 14 is when things start to get serious physically. By that age you know what’s going to hurt someone. You wise up and start to understand what the game is all about. You’re no longer an innocent kid chasing the ball around. If someone kicks you, you know where it hurts and how it hurts, and consequently you learn how to hurt them back.

      Not that Mum and Dad encouraged that side of things to blossom. Still, they weren’t rigid about family discipline. To be a ‘cheeky little bugger’ was fine up to a point, but if we were in the company of adults we would be expected to say please and thank you and to show respect. They wanted me to be my own person while also teaching me good manners and making sure I knew how to conduct myself. In fact, they wanted us all to have a personality, and they knew how to provide fun for us as we grew up. If my dad had a spare fiver, he would want to take us on a day out.

      Mum was in charge of the day-to-day parenting and instruction. She knitted the whole family together, and she still rules the roost. To get into the Owen family you’ve got to get past my mum. She had five children and worked as well, so she was always a grafter – still is. Even though she worked eight till five, she always seemed to be there, every minute of the day. She, more than my dad, shaped my everyday behaviour.

      If we got a rocket from Dad, it was once in a blue moon, which made you want to avoid it even more. He was never a shouter, though. With me, he would prefer to go quiet. He just wouldn’t speak to me. And that’s the worst thing in the world. There is no one you want to impress more than your dad. If he’s not talking to you, life’s not worth living.

      I wasn’t a naughty kid, but if it was Halloween, say, I might be tempted to throw an egg at a window like any other mischievous young boy. I got up to my own tricks. If there was a weaker boy I might take away his ball. It’s embarrassing to remember that now. Of course I stepped out of line many times as a child. If I smashed a window with a football I might run off without owning up to it, and the owner would come knocking on the door. In the neighbourhood I was known as ‘the footballer’, so unfortunately it was always obvious that I was the culprit. But it would take a lot to push my dad so far that he would stop talking to me altogether.

      After games, he had his own way of conveying his feelings about my performances. If I played badly, he might not talk to me about it until my next game. Now that I’m an adult I can see that had a very positive effect, but it didn’t half hurt at the time. It wasn’t deliberate on his part. Even now, if I play badly the level of conversation drops. He’ll try, but it’s in his nature not to speak quite so freely. I’ve talked to him about it and he’s assured me he doesn’t mean to go quiet. We have a laugh about what his silences were like when I was a kid, and he insists, ‘I genuinely didn’t do it on purpose.’ He just wanted so much for me to do well. If I played badly he was disappointed for me rather than in me. He knew I wanted to please, and I never experienced his occasional silences as pressure to succeed. It was just ingrained in me to try to please my dad.

      I wouldn’t be allowed to touch my football boots. That was Dad’s job. He took great pride on a Saturday in me having the shiniest boots. If you’re proud of the way you look and feel, I suppose you’ve got more chance of doing something well; if you’re always scruffy you might play that way. Plainly, I didn’t think about life like that when I was a child, but now I can see the point in investing time and care in your appearance. As soon as I got home I’d take my boots out on to the patio and he’d get to work with the brushes. Right from the start that job wasn’t mine. For some reason Dad seemed to enjoy it.

      These days he reads papers and listens to phone-ins to monitor what kind of coverage I’m getting. He feels proud when someone says something good about me and fiercely angry if anyone says anything bad. He knows me back to front and he sees me as a decent lad, so when people accuse me of being a cheat or dishonest in any way he must see it as a slight against himself. A few years ago people were calling me a diver and he just couldn’t accept people questioning my honesty. You could say that if we expect praise we should be able to take the reverse as well, but quite frankly he’s not asking for praise, and nor am I, so I’m not sure that principle stands up. I get paid so well I can’t ever complain about my job. Ninety-nine per cent of people will assume it’s great to be famous. I’m not so sure. I never ask for plaudits, and likewise I don’t welcome people having a go at me.

      It wasn’t all football. Dad was an avid golfer. As a kid, if I didn’t have a football match I wanted to do what my dad was doing. On Sundays he would go off to play with a few mates and I would be his caddy. Sometimes he probably wanted to be away from the family, just with his friends, but more often than not he would take me along. Afterwards I would sit in the corner with a glass of Coke and a packet of crisps while he played snooker.

      I used to love looking for lost golf balls. Sometimes I would be 50 yards down the fairway rummaging through the bushes while he was taking his shot. We had a ritual: late on a Sunday afternoon, after the football, we would go up to the course and head straight for the rough; we would spend two or three hours looking for golf balls and would be disappointed if we didn’t find 20 or 30. He used to play games with me, saying, ‘Oh, I’m sure I can feel something under my foot. Oh, maybe not.’ On the way home we’d stop for a can of Lilt at the local garage. Later I became quite competitive about it. Whoever found the most balls would get first pick after we’d scrubbed them clean with Fairy liquid. When they were bright white we would lay them out on the patio and take turns to choose. I couldn’t imagine a better way to spend a Sunday evening than doing all that with my dad. With my own son I will do those sorts of activities.

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